If you're having trouble getting into the game, try playing as Emelia or Red. Their story lines are the quickest to get moving. Asellus is for people who have plenty of patience for a long grind at the beginning.

When i played it a while ago, i played as that chick that broke out of prison, her story seemed the most interesting, but i had trouble getting into it afterwards...i felt like the game just dumped me to do whatever i pleased. I had to resort to a walkthrough to figure out what to do next and even then, i still got to a point where i had no idea how to proceed. Don't remember if i made it past that particular point or not, but i shelved the game afterwards.

That was Emelia. She has a few main missions. In between, you get time to do side quests, shop or just grind up some more power. Go back to the cafe when you feel ready and continue the main quest.

Blue is the only character who just gets dumped to do his own thing. His main quest is basically to do all the side quests, then go home and kick his own ass. If he gets his ass kicked by himself instead, it's still good. You have to be from the Magic Kingdom to understand it.

With any character, you can spend a lot of time wandering around in ruins that have nothing to do with your quest, do all the same side quests, pick up many of the same side characters to add to your team, and even recruit one or two of the other main characters. It's all mostly optional, but it's worth doing. You can get some of the better loot rather early on, it's how you get access to better spells and you can build yourself a better team with the allies you recruit.

Of course, getting into it is a matter of personal taste. Not everybody likes turn-based games with such a high encounter density in the dungeons. Most people like watching Emelia get 12 flips with Locomotion-G while wearing the bunny suit, though. Everybody at my house counts the flips out loud.